I have heard all this talk about ridiculous weapon damage, but can’t work out how it’s done.

By my calculations this would be the max damage on a Deadric Greatsword:

Base damage = 24
Legendary Smithing = +10 damage = 34
100% two hand skill = +40% damage = 48
All Barbarian perks = +100% damage = 95

If I also have 4 pieces of Armour with +25% two hand boast each that gives +100% damage = 190 damage

I understand that power attacks double and sneak attacks make it 15x as big, but people seem to be implying you can get to 600+ damage without these?

What am I missing?

http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii167/bl3count/meleedamage-1.jpg's what I came up with, including 4x40% enchantments, no power attacks. You can get a better smithing improvement bonus from wearing smithing fortified gear, and taking a fortify smithing potion though. You can also boost the strength of the fortify damage enchantments via potions. Then there's looping that could potentially give you infinite damage if you're bored enough. Enchant a set of fortify alchemy gear, use it to make a fortify enchanting potion, use that potion to make better alchemy gear, lather, rinse, repeat a hundred times, then enchant some smithing gear and make a daedric sword of flaming death.

So smithing has no skill limit at all? So where I have +10 from smithing that can actually be much more?

Yeah. Here's a link to the http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Smithing UESP page, apparently you get another 0.1 damage per point of smithing skill. +Smithing potions can be over 100% even without looping, and +smithing gear is I think about another +100%. So like another 20 damage for a sword, without really using any exploits, just maxing your skills and putting them to use (which some people seem to consider an exploit just because the results are ridiculous.)

So there is no limit on the +% for potions?

Isnt there a limit on enchanted items that say that an item cant have more than +25% bonus? If so there would still be a max limit that could be reached for potions.

But I can see if you just have smithing at +200% that would give you:


Deadric Greatsword:

Base damage = 24
Legendary Smithing +200% = +30 damage = 54
100% two hand skill = +40% damage = 75
All Barbarian perks = +100% damage = 151
4 pieces of Armour with +25% two hand boast each that gives +100% damage = 302 damage

Pretty sure there's no limit on the +damage enchants either, haven't seen one mentioned anywhere. At 100 enchanting skill with perks I get +40% per enchantment. Fortify enchanting potions aren't normally very strong though, so I don't think you're ever going to get up above maybe +50% each. Still, that's a lot of damage, more than destruction with "weakness to whatever" potions I think, and much less of a hassle.